Warehouse-Sized Hot Wheels Racetrack To Be Installed at LA Museum

Rev-up your engines for sculptor Chris Burden’s “Metropolis II,” a warehouse-sized Hot Wheels racetrack, which will debut at the Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA) in about six months.

A work in progress since 2006, this stainless steel installation is driven by 1,200 cars in 18 lanes and 13 toy trains. With his team of eight studio assistants and an engineer, Burden plans to decorate the racetrack with buildings made out of Legos and Lincoln Logs.

The racetrack’s predecessor “Metropolis I,” displayed at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan, in 2004, was smaller in scale, but complete with a monorail and 80 Hot Wheels whizzing down two single-lane highways.

In “Metropolis II,” however, Burden figures that “every hour, 100,000 cars circulate through the city.” That’s why LACMA Director Michael Govan loves the piece. “It’s a portrait of L.A.,” he told The New York Times.